Two mainland Americans who reside in Puerto Rico but don't speak Spanish have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court to force the Commonwealth Elections Commission (CEE) to print English-language ballots for the upcoming November 4 general election.

Currently, the Commission prints general election ballots and voting instructions only in Spanish, which is the language spoken by the overwhelming majority of the Caribbean island's four million inhabitants (although in 2000 the Commission did print a dual-language ballot for the cancelled presidential election). In fact, last April the Commission discussed the matter, but the electoral commissioners representing Puerto Rico's four registered political parties failed to reach an agreement, and in July CEE Chairman Ramón Gómez ruled that there is no requirement to print ballots in English as well, as there is no law or regulation to that end.

The filed lawsuit notes that according to the Census 2000 language statistics - which were calculated from a 1-in-6 sample instead of a 100% count - 14.4% of Puerto Rico's population over the age of five speaks only English. However, it should be noted that in recent times there have been significant variations in the U.S. Census Bureau figures on Puerto Rico's anglophone-only population. In fact, the most recent statistics from the Census Bureau's 2006 Puerto Rico Community Survey indicate that just under 4.7% of Puerto Rico's inhabitants speak only English, while 95.2% speak Spanish. These figures - which have a margin of error of +/-0.2% - come fairly close to the statistics from the 1980 and 1990 censuses, which indicate that 98.2% of the population of Puerto Rico spoke Spanish - while nearly three-quarters of the remaining 1.8% spoke neither Spanish nor English.

The plaintiffs also make the case that in Puerto Rico both English and Spanish are official languages. Nonetheless, after 110 years under the U.S. flag, Spanish remains the dominant language; the San Juan metro area is more-or-less bilingual, but the rest of Puerto Rico is almost exclusively Spanish-speaking. In fact, as of 2006 only a small minority (15.1%) of Puerto Rico's Spanish-speaking population spoke English "very well," and many Puerto Ricans - including a large number of government employees - speak little or no English. Moreover, Puerto Rico's political parties have always run their election campaigns exclusively in Spanish.

Given that recent statistics from the 2006 Puerto Rico Community Survey cast doubt on previous Census 2000 language findings, it's not clear that there is a need to establish English-language election ballots - at least on a Puerto Rico-wide basis - but the courts may rule otherwise.

On August 27, 2008, U.S. District Court Judge José Fusté ordered the Commonwealth Elections Commission to have bilingual ballots available for the upcoming general election. The Popular Democratic Party's electoral commissioner appealed the ruling, but on September 4 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit dismissed the appeal.